“What a gift to the community ..." Dick Jaeger helped make Lafayette Jeff a performing arts powerhouse, wished only to bring smiles through voice and song

Former Lafayette Jeff choral teacher Dick Jaeger Tuesday, December 1, 2015, at Westminster Village in West Lafayette. (Photo: John Terhune/Journal & Courier)

LAFAYETTE, Ind. – Back when trains ran down the middle of Fifth Street in downtown Lafayette, the city had a small contingent called the Hoopla Committee.

The Hoopla Committee’s job – in those days in the 1980s and 1990s, when the city was doing all it could to move tracks off the middle of Fifth Street – was pretty much contained in the name. During each big groundbreaking or milestone during the nearly three decades of the Lafayette Railroad Relocation Project, the group acted as party planners, hyping the day with balloons, neckerchiefs, engineer hats and whatever other bells and actual wooden train whistles fit the day.

Dick Jaeger, by trade a teacher who helped build Lafayette Jefferson High School into a performing arts powerhouse and later by reputation as a community showman, knew his part of the necessary hoopla on days that featured big crowds that probably needed to get back to work, members of Congress who’d secured millions of dollars for projects and invariably long waits.

Jaeger always was ready with sing-along on the spot, delivered from a stage no bigger than a Fifth Street bench or curb.

“Dick was a calming force among the group when Amtrak was late or something was going wrong,” said Jo Wade, president of president of Visit Lafayette-West Lafayette and part of that Hoopla Committee.

“It was always difficult for him to get through the crowds, as everyone that knew him loved him and would want to chat,” Wade said. “But we all knew he could entertain and distract the crowds while the rest of us were doing the stressing.”

On Monday, Jaeger’s family announced that he’d died after a life in which “his only wish being to bring smiles to all through music, voice and song.” He was 89.

Jaeger, born in Montgomery County and schooled at Indiana University, spent 25 years at Lafayette Jeff, starting in 1955. He told the story often about initially wanting to quit a year into his assignment from Lafayette Supt. Russell Hiatt to recharge the high school’s choral program and put its stage productions on par with the Bronchos’ athletic department. Jaeger also often told the story about being stunned that a superintendent could reject a resignation letter, which is what Hiatt did.

In the end, Jaeger did what Hiatt asked him to do.

The testaments to Jaeger, as news of his death of his death Monday began to spread, were pretty much like the teacher himself: Hale and full-throated.

“Just think of the generations Dick touched,” said Sally Downham Miller, who was part of Lafayette Jeff’s class of 1961. Miller, while in school, was a student director for Jaeger’s production of “The King and I.” Downham Miller’s daughter, Tamara, had one of the lead roles in “The King and I” at the end of Jaeger’s career at Jeff.

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Jaeger brought Jean Branson Miller to Lafayette Jeff in 1968. She was accompanist for Jaeger’s choirs at the start, but she replaced Jeff’s second choral teacher, Gary Branson, when he was drafted. She said she figured her job would last as long as Gary Branson’s military tour did. But she said Jaeger fought to keep her.

“Dick said, ‘I don’t want you to leave,’” Jean Branson Miller said. “He said, ‘I want to expand the department.’ And he did. … It seemed like between the three of us, we had all the tricks covered. And away we went.”

She said Jaeger put a priority on getting Lafayette Jeff’s choirs out into the community and making the annual Christmas and spring shows at the school big affairs for more than Lafayette Jeff students and parents. Those shows became sold-out traditions.

They teamed with other departments to put on lavish – “and not just by high school standards,” she said – musicals at the school, finding ways to bring in professional costume design help and other flourishes.

“Dick never left one stone unturned,” said Jean Branson Miller, who was at Jeff until 1984 and now lives in Indianapolis.

“And he always seemed to get the best out of every student he put into a part,” she said. “To this day, when I talk to people about Lafayette Jeff’s choral programs, they say to me, ‘State of the art.’ And I say, ‘That’s right.’ … I go back now, and they’ve just kept expanding, with show choirs and so much more. It makes me proud to see. Dick started that.”

John Ohaver, a 1970 Lafayette Jeff graduate who now lives in Naperville, Illinois, said he remembers how competitive it was to work his way up in Jaeger’s choirs, trying out in a Tecumseh Junior High book storage room to make a boys choir called Apollo. There, sophomores had to prove they were worthy of Jeff’s A Capella choir, typically reserved for the top juniors and seniors.

“At Jeff, A Capella choir was to music what basketball was to any Broncho – the pinnacle,” Ohaver said. “And Dick Jaeger was the Marion Crawley of choral music.”

Crawley, a legendary basketball coach at Jeff, has his name on the school’s gym. Lafayette Jeff’s theater was renamed for Jaeger after a $1.5 million renovation started in 2004.

Brian Koning sang in Jaeger’s choirs as a sophomore and junior. He also was in that second production of “The King and I” in 1980, Jaeger’s last at Lafayette Jeff.

“When he retired from teaching just before my senior year in 1981, I was devastated, thinking I’d never be able to work with him again,” said Koning, who lives in Westfield. “But that was just beginning of a long friendship and mentorship for me.”

Jaeger, who went on to a career with the United Way of Greater Lafayette, always kept his hand in performing after retiring from Lafayette Jeff, leaning on generations of students to help. He led the Freedom Singers through “Battle Hymn of the Republic” during Greater Lafayette’s Stars and Stripes Concert on the Fourth of July, directed productions for Civic Theater, hosted a cable access show called “Going Like 60,” and presented “Christmastide,” his show featuring holiday classics mixed in with the volumes of songs he wrote for the season. (Jaeger told the J&C that he wrote a Christmas song each year for the show at Lafayette Jeff.)

“He got me and other former students involved in United Way of Greater Lafayette, Freedom Singers and other private and public endeavors,” Koning said. “If he called on you, you just said, ‘Yes.’”

Jaeger also wrote reviews of Lafayette Symphony Orchestra performances, Purdue Theater and Civic Theater plays, and Bach Chorale Singers concerts for 17 years for the J&C. He’d done the same for the Lafayette Leader for three years before that. His job at that point, he said, was to channel advice he’d received from one of his IU professors: “Remember no performer, professional or amateur, intentionally want to perform badly.”

He gave up that role in 2012, saying that his eyes were going bad. He couldn’t tell people about things he couldn’t see.

He wrote this in the J&C, by way of farewell: “But I still can hear music, and while I won’t be adjudicating or writing it, I will be enjoying it and taking satisfaction in the knowledge that perhaps my former students, colleagues and performers may be benefiting from what I have discovered over the past 20-plus years.”

Sally Downham Miller said the lessons she discovered from Jaeger, whether in school or later in his community work, “I’ve taken into every part of my career.”

“I think what he did is what we’re missing – that sense of community, of bringing all the parts together and everyone can have a role and make something better,” Downham Miller said. “One thing Dick always showed is that you can have fun doing it. … What a gift to the community Dick’s always been.”

Reach Dave Bangert at 765-420-5258 or at dbangert@jconline.com. Follow on Twitter: @davebangert.